Book Setting
The novel is set in the 22nd century of the Noon Universe. Mankind is capable of near-instanteneous interstellar travel. Earth social organization is presumably Communist, and can be described as a highly technologically advanced anarchistic meritocracy.
There is no state structure, no institutionalized coercion (no police etc.), yet functioning of the society is safeguarded by raising everyone as responsible individuals, with guidance of a set of High Councils accepted by everyone in each particular field of activity.
It is a society of highly morally evolved individuals that has solved all of its material problems, knows no crime, feels no threats (except possibly from unchecked scientific exploration) and spends much of its efforts in scientific research (space exploration done mostly by volunteers), arts, education and caring for the young. Teachers are the most honorable profession.
One of the controversial occupations is progressor. They are agents embedded in less advanced humanoid civilizations in order to accelerate their development or resolve their problems. Progressors' methods range from rescuing local scientists and artists to overthrowing local governments.
The book is set on one such war-torn post-nuclear war planet, Saraksh, where a space-exploring Earth youth gets stuck after his rocket is first damaged and then blown up, forcing him on his journey of discovery and contact within a fascist society of one of the planet's countries.
Read more about this topic: Prisoners Of Power
Famous quotes containing the words book and/or setting:
“It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)